Scorekeeping Gig starts with a Splash

Literally.

As hinted at previously, the Baseball Gods have granted me a second chance to get paid to watch baseball. This time, it's an outfit called Baseball Info Solutions, who are actually well connected and respected people in the Sabermetric community. The company itself is an up-and-comer, but hardly fly-by-night!

So they are scoring minor league games for the rest of the season, and I am among a pool of 8 or so individuals splitting the duties (the founder of Total Recap is also involved). It's a lot of fun, using the Project Scoresheet method and a computer collection system.

It's fun in theory, at least. Last night's game (a 14-3 loss by the Sea Dogs to the Sea Wolves) turned out to be a miserable experience. First, the game was delayed by 45 minutes due to rain. Then there were off and on showers (and nearby thunder) for a few innings, before the steady rain decided to stay in about the fifth inning.

Steady rain and paper score sheets don't mix. Things got messy really quickly, though I think I was able to retain most of the information.

Worse still was how play deteriorated in the last two innings. The game was actually moving at a pretty good clip through seven innings, with Josh Stevens recording 9 junky strikeouts and blue-chipper Kyle Sleeth overcoming some early control problems to hold the Sea Dogs down. It was 3-2 heading to the 8th. Then things got real bad real fast.

Ryan Larson gave up two doubles and a hit to start the 8th, then turned things over to Bo Donaldson. Donaldson proceeded to walk the bases loaded again. When he found the strike zone, it didn't get any better. Erie scored 7 runs to take a 9-3 lead.

After the Dogs went quietly in the 8th, more trouble started, and some embarrasing weirdness. Colin Young came on to pitch and actually retired the first batter, then walked Scott Raburn. At this point, the Dogs seemed interested in just finishing the game, so they didn't hold the runner on. Young was using his "windup" motion, but since he always pitches from the stretch, the umps considered it to be a stretch pitch instead of a windup pitch.

When Colin Young is in the "windup", he pauses in the middle of his motion. This is a balk. The ump called a balk on the second pitch, then had a spirited debate with the Sea Dogs dugout. The Dogs contended that, since they weren't holding the runner on, he was pitching from the windup, despite how he started the motion.

"If he does it again, I'm calling it a balk," was the umps reply. (Note that I could hear this clearly from section 204 due to the fact that very few people were in the stands by then. A six-run deficit and steady rain will empty any park very quickly.) And the ump was true to his word. Young didn't change his motion, and the ump called the balk, sending the runner to third. Then Young balked the runner home.

Keep in mind that all the while the balks are treated as "no pitch". This means that, through five minutes of balking and bickering, no progress is being made on the batter. And it's still raining.

This was easily the biggest travesty that I have ever personally witnessed on a baseball field. Young was distracted and continued to get hammered until he was mercifully removed for second baseman Raul Nieves. Nieves had his own control problems, but induced a couple of popouts to limit the damage to 5 runs. That's 12 runs in the last two innings, for those of you keeping track at home.

The Sea Dogs and umps were kind enough to produce a 1-2-3 ninth inning, and we could all go home at 11:00, just as the rain stopped!

It was disappointing that this game was so miserable, from both a weather and performance standpoint. I was looking forward to watching top Red Sox prospect Hanley Ramirez, who was playing in his second Sea Dogs game. He got a hit and struck out a couple of times, but I will say that I wasn't impressed with his range at shortstop. I was also looking forward to seeing Sleeth, who has struggled at AA thus far but looked OK last night. He was wild, but he also displayed a lively fastball that tripped the radar at 93 mph with regularity. Seeing these guys was a treat, I just hope that I can see them under clear skies next time.